THE LIBERATOR OFFICIAL PUBLICATION OF THE LIBERAL ARTS COUNCIL UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN | NOVEMBER 26, 2012| ISSUE 6
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IN CASE YOU DIDN’T KNOW, THE PCL IS NOW OPEN FOR 24 HOURS A DAY, 5 DAYS A WEEK
WHEN Now that everyone has stashed their rubber presidential masks and finally trashed the extra 3 Musketeers minis, Halloween’s reject friend-by-association, we can take a cue from what Macy’s has been up to since July—ringing in the holiday season. I’m the first one to plunge head first into a Thanksgiving countdown and Christmas calendar-crossing. Light the pumpkin spice and cinnamon apple candles! Stick up a strong finger to Mother Nature and wear sweaters despite 89 weather! Heck, rationalize spending $3.65 for some glorified hot chocolate because they had the insight to serve it up right—with peppermint and in a festive cup! There are just a few small things standing in the way of your shameless seasonal giddiness…exams. Be cautious, because before you can tell mom what you expect on the table upon your homecoming, you have to face a monsoon of midterms. You may have made it through rounds one, even two, of tests and term papers, but somewhere between catching up on sleep and watching a full television series on DVD you forgot you’re not done yet. Not only do you have some lingering projects, but you have to tackle your finals before you can begin to imagine the classes you settled on for next semester. Our campus cafés usually keep pretty busy, but during finals season, the lines congest the
place with junkies needing their fix. Nothing converts non-coffee connoisseurs quicker than three looming essay/short-answer/ multi-choice combos in two days. Luckily, our campus is caffeine stockpiled with different vendors right on the 40 Acres. For those who forget that there are sizes besides “tall” or “grande” you can find that oh-so-familiar green siren in the Union, Jester Mall, SAC, football stadium, or down a block on 24th Street. Your choices for studying sustenance don’t end there though; competition is the name of the game, so the Drag also has Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, Einstein’s Bros. Bagels, and Café Medici. If you don’t have the wherewithal to venture too far from whatever outlet you managed to stake as your own for the week, Prufrock’s is on the first floor of the PCL, and a robotic barista can hook you up in the FAC with the new Briggo automatic coffee system. Now that you’ve procrastinated long enough in lines for coffee, it’s time to find a spot to hunker down for the long haul. If you’re connected to Student Government or the Senate of College Councils, it’s pretty common knowledge that the PCL is now open 24 hours a day, 5 days a week (ahh, that’s what all those 24/5 t-shirts mean!) Though this point has been a tad belabored in different student organizations on campus, this new policy is pretty great. The Thor-Wills ticket for the student body presidential slate campaigned on this promise, and as the test pressure increases, it’s a provision students can be grateful for. In the past, the PCL had extended hours around finals time, but now that campus’ main library is always open all night, so you’re free to move on in. The UT library system has also had an exam-time program, Crunch Time, where they have subject specialists on hand to help with the
sprint to the end. They market the initiative to help with papers, exams, and research offering online chat assistance, e-mail provisions, and calling station. The website also offers quick links to help with citations, copyright-free images, and primary sources. So, though you may be spending more time in the library than in your own room in the coming month, please try to still shower. It’s easy to understand how being overcaffeinated and under-rested makes for a stressful situation, and the schedule of exams doesn’t allow you to resort to your typical weekend frivolity to ease the tension. When stress feels overwhelming and you’re on the brink of insanity, it’s sometimes best to put the latte down, close the textbook, and walk away from the cubicle. The university’s MindBody Lab is located on the fifth floor of the Student Services Building as a service for managing stress from the Counseling and Mental Health Center. This environment is designed to help students improve their emotional and physical health through guided exercises such as breathing routines and meditation. The lab is open Monday—Friday from 8:00am to 4:00pm, and you don’t even need to schedule an appointment. You’ll find plush leather chairs and headphones awaiting you, so kick your feet up, and grab a cat nap, knowing that at the end of this process you can sleep your winter vacation away. Halloween may be long over by now, but with exams upon us, everyone is just starting to look like zombies. Remember to keep yourself energized, claim your favorite study spot early, and take the time to chill out amidst the chaos. Buckle up, it’s going to be a bumpy ride, but we’re almost there!
CASSIE MANEEN
WHEN STARBUCKS IS FULL OF FRESHMEN, GET YOUR FIX AT - EINSTEIN BROS. BAGELS - COFFEE BEAN & TEA LEAF - CAFE MEDICI - PRUFROCK’S @ PCL - BRIGGO ROBOT @ FAC
THE LIBRARIES HAVE SUBJECT SPECIALISTS TO HELP WITH LAST MINUTE PAPERWRITING/STUDYING CRISES IF YOU’RE ALREADY STRESSED AND IT’S TOO MUCH, GO TO THE MINDBODY LAB ON THE 5TH FLOOR @ SSB
PHOTO FROM CREATIVE COMMONS
THE LIBERATOR | NOVEMBER 19, 2012 | ISSUE 5
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1 2 Each semester as the new members of LAC come in, they are tasked with planning and executing an event to help rally the Liberal Arts students and impact the college as a whole. This time around, the group of 30 new members worked hard to present: “Oh the Places You’ll Go!” a fair that represented the diversity of languages offered at UT, and showed how a language or area-specific degree can be applied in the real world. In the past, the New Member Projects focused on alumni or research development, but the current new member class decided on a more global approach. “The new members decided to focus on the international aspect because they believed the multiculturalism to be an integral characteristic of the CoLA,” freshman Aruj Rawal said. “By promoting the various languages within the college, LAC also promotes cultural awareness among UT students.” The event emphasized how the Liberal Arts language requirement is not as inhibiting as many students like to think. “Sometimes the language requirement can be tough for students to be excited about, but by exposing them to something new that they might turn out to be really interested in can facilitate learning about different cultures and open them up for new experiences,” senior Kelsey Thompson said. The event offered an invaluable resource of information from area studies and language professors, as well as study abroad representatives and, of course, students experienced with the study abroad program. The professors spoke about the benefits of working with them and the career implications that came with studying their field.
“Those attending the new event will gain a first hand, personal account of how languages help within a career,” Rawal said. “In addition to understanding the applicability and benefits of a second language, students will also gain exposure to languages offered in the college, so that they can look at their options to complete the language requirement.” For many students, studying abroad seems like an impossibility, but the representatives and fellow students helped bring that dream to a possible reality with useful information about scholarships and different options students can take to make traveling affordable. “I [hope] that when students left our event, they had a better sense of the resources that surround them on this campus. UT is a world-renowned institution and hosting an event that shows off the university’s ability to support diversity is very important in our time as students,” sophomore Omar Gamboa said. The event is not only about what students can personally gain from visiting different cultures, being a multicultural, connected society is become a fact of life. “In an increasingly interconnected world, it has never been more important to be an informed and globally aware citizen,” freshman Anita Farsad said. “A Liberal Arts degree offers student the chance to learn about cultures and the world around them, so we want this event to serve as a catalyst to inspire students to actively pursue global awareness.” The new members meant for the event to attract any student truly interested in taking their education to a new level, immersed in a completely different culture. “Our goal is to attract all students, regardless of what year they are in,”
sophomore Amber Muhammad said. “Whether they are graduating this spring or they are in their first semester at UT, we want to showcase the opportunities available at UT in hopes that it will inspire students to go study abroad and get an unforgettable experience.” Liberal Arts Council travel abroad fair brought together important information from travel packages to the farthest corners of Asia, to programs in Oxford University. The event also connected students to various non-profit organizations like the Peace Corps and the Inti Raymi Fund so they could take their travel abroad experience to a new level. Hopefully to those who visited, the fair had an impact that encouraged students to broaden their global perspective.
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NATALIA NARANJO
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DAVID “CHIMU” MCGRAIN OF THE INTI RAYMI FUND
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STUDENTS REPRESENTING THEIR CULTURAL ORGANIZATION + ITS OPPORTUNITIES
MEMBERS OF LIBERAL ARTS COUNCIL HANDING OUT PASSPORTS FOR THE STUDENTS TO HAVE VARIOUS BOOTHS STAMP. WITH 3 STAMPS, THE STUDENTS COULD GET PIZZA OR A TACO THE STUDY ABROAD OFFICE, SPONSORS OF THE EVENT PHOTOS BY: MADHU SINGH
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PROFESSOR SPOTLIGHT DR. JULIE HARDWICK TEACHES WITCHES, WORKERS + WIVES PHOTO BY MADHU SINGH Now that the election is over, we can all take a breather, sit back, relax, and go back to our every day lives. No more political ads and solicitations for votes, just our mundane routines. Perhaps, however, our every day lives aren’t as mundane as we might think; at least not to Professor Julie Hardwick. “When I was an undergraduate, the history of every day life, social history, was at its peak,“ Dr. Hardwick notes, “my subsequent interests, those questions about law and every day life were undercurrents that developed.” Today, Dr. Hardwick is a professor in the department of History and the Center for European Studies, as well as the director of the Institute for Historical Studies. She specializes in early modern European social and cultural history, legal history, and gender and family history. “Historians talk a lot about change,” says Dr. Hardwick, however, “looking at the history of the family makes you very aware of continuity in the persistence of these problems.” For example, there was a lot of domestic violence in early modern Europe and there’s a lot of domestic violence now Dr. Hardwick earned her Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University and started teach in 1991 before coming to UT in 2001. Combining her lifelong study of social history and interests in legal and family history, Dr. Hardwick’s understanding of the history of the family and every
day life, both socially and legally, is vast. She currently teaches several courses at UT, among them Workers, Witches, and Wives, the name of which she mentions is “a marketing thing,” to hook people into looking at gender and family as well as early modern Europe. Dr. Hardwick’s goal with the class is “to think about the ways in which working families not only experienced always enormous changes, […] but also about how their choices were essential to creating those really monumental transformations” associated with the shift to early modern history. The class also features discussion of women and their role in society, a theme we see recurring in today’s society with the political focus on women and the so-called War on Women. While Dr. Hardwick has taught some version of this class for years and has “seen a lot of student interest that whole time,”. Talking specifically about the War on Women, Dr. Hardwick offers some interesting insight. “There was certainly a lot of hostile rhetoric towards women in early modern Europe,” Dr. Hardwick states. What she finds useful for students today in understanding the War on Women are family life continuities as well as a woman’s desire to control her fertility, the central point she made. “Women are going to want to control their fertility,” Dr. Hardwick states, “no matter what is going on, that is actually
very important for women.” She notes that she thinks it’s important for men, too, but we have fewer records of them articulating this viewpoint. And this is a reality today. “You can’t just pretend that isn’t going to happen,” says Dr. Hardwick, “it’s better to just accept that as a reality [and decide] how to manage that desire.” In early modern Europe, where women had very few means of doing so, controlling their fertility was still very important to them and the past couple years have shown us that it still is and it’s something they are willing to fight for. Dr. Hardwick mentions the rhetoric pushing back against access to contraception through insurance is twofold. One side is a religious argument and the other is a lifestyle choice argument. However, “look[ing] back at early modern Europe, you can see it’s really not a lifestyle choice,” she says. So what is the future of women and the family in our society today? “Things have changed for the better, “ states Dr. Hardwick. She says we’ve come a long way and that while issues such as domestic violence and equal pay gaps persist, our values regarding these issues have changed. “Legally, we have zero tolerance for family violence today,” she says, and “we have a really different value system and I think that’s very very important.” While the continuities Dr. Hardwick focuses on exist, today we have different kinds of responses and remedies for these challenges,
something she says “is a more optimistic way of thinking about it.” How do students benefit from all this? First, beware. Students too often expect a direct lesson from history and “that lesson is more nuanced and contexted,” says Dr. Hardwick. Second, she says the one thing students can take away is that “these challenges that families have faced are really long-standing and there’s not going to be any kind of quick-fix,” despite what politicians today are offering. Additionally, we notice that parents and children alike were “immensely resourceful about trying to meet these challenges and we can still see that resourcefulness persist today.” The most wonderful thing for Dr. Hardwick, as a professor, is that students are constantly surprised by things we’ve taken for granted and that there is an “energizing consequence of that interaction” that she likes very much. Dr. Hardwick’s dedication to educating students is apparent and rightfully evidenced by her success as a professor here at UT. She has won the RapoportKing Award for thesis advising multiple times and was recently received a Joe and Bettie Branson Ward Excellence Award nomination. However, she says the awards she loves most are thank you cards from students. “That’s more validating than any kind of institutional award you can get,” says Dr. Hardwick humbly. DANA HENNING
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